July 2019: Spotted Lanternflies Invade ASEV-ES
This year’s Eastern Section conference for the American Society for Enology and Viticulture took place in Geneva, NY on the beautiful campus of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The three day conference was combined with the Nelson J. Shaulis Symposium, which focused on emerging technological tools for precision vineyard management. The first day was the bulk of the ASEV-ES conference, featuring technical talks, student flash talks/poster presentations, and student presentations in viticulture and enology. Perhaps the most exciting part of the conference was the event that was scheduled for the very end of the day: the renowned Oenolympics, a friendly (yet heated) competition that challenges students to think about viticulture and enology creatively. Competition events ranged from interpretive dances of technical abstracts to carefully aimed corks being launched out of Prosecco bottles. This year, competition was fierce but in the end there could be only one winner…the Spotted Lanternflies (aka, the “bad bugs”). (Disclaimer: the victory is accurately portrayed here despite the author of this article being on the winning team).
Special mention must also be given to Dr. Tim Martinson, senior extension associate at Cornell University, who received the eastern section’s Outstanding Achievement Award. Congratulations, Tim!
June 2019: Mansfield Lab Has Moved!
After a flurry of activity to get the lab in boxes, we have officially moved from Cornell-Ithaca campus to Cornell-Geneva campus (aka, Cornell AgriTech). Anyone who has ever moved locations knows how much time and effort goes into packing…and unpacking. Alas, data can’t be collected if instruments are offline and glassware in boxes. We are happy to report that not only are we in a new location, but we are also fully operational as a lab again (can’t keep a good scientist away from their HPLC, after all).
Current students in the lab will continue to take courses in Ithaca and conduct research in Geneva. Commuting is made easier by a shuttle that runs between the Ithaca and Geneva campuses a few times a day (more info here). We look forward to re-building our community one lake over and settling back into our old digs!
Fall 2018: Mansfield Lab Welcomes New Recruits
Word has spread that the Mansfield lab is conducting exciting research! We have been fortunate to have multiple brilliant and creative minds accept offers to join the group. With backgrounds ranging from chemistry to French, three new students have joined the Mansfield Lab to investigate topics on the forefront of cool climate enology research. Welcome, Adrienne, Catherine, and Sasha!
July 10-12, 2017: NY Crew Travels to Charlottesville, Virginia
It’s not every day that folks in the wine industry actually get to lead the life that everyone outside the industry believes us to lead (think: sipping wine atop a large hill overlooking pristine, manicured vineyards), but during the first day of the ASEV-ES conference, we (the entire Mansfield lab) got to do just that. This year, the annual conference for the Eastern Section of the American Society of Enology and Viticulture was held in Charlottesville, Virginia and, as an introduction to the local wine industry, the first “unofficial” day of the conference offered a first-hand experience with some of the local vineyards and wineries. Starting bright and early, we set out to Barboursville Vineyard, a beautiful vineyard that highlighted the importance of site selection and offered tastings of some older vintages of Viognier and Cabernet Franc. From there, we journeyed to Trump Winery before heading to a breathtaking spot for lunch, Carter Mountain Orchard. In addition to seeing a wide variety of vineyard management practices in action, we were also treated to some local peaches! We finished the day at King Family Vineyards, sampling everything from a lively, floral Viognier to a sweet, honeyed late harvest Petit Manseng.
After a rather hot and sunny day in the vineyards, it appeared that conference go-ers were happy to welcome the comfort of the conference facilities for the remaining two days of the conference that would be full of engaging talks, an industry workshop and, of course, the “Oenolympics”. Marie presented her work on yeast species identification, Mark discussed his research on tannins in red hybrid grapes, and Demi discussed previous work she conducted looking at rejection thresholds of grapey odorants. Seth, presenting his findings on nitrogen optimization and temperature controlled fermentations, won the award for best student presentation for his talk titled “Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen Source and Fermentation Temperature Impacts the Chemistry and Sensory Properties of Cool-Climate Riesling”. He also led “The Groovy Guzzlers” to a victory in the Oenolympics to take home the title in his final year at ASEV-ES.
It would be impossible to comment on all the information that was shared during the conference, but after touring the vineyards and listening to presentations about the local industry, it became very clear that down in Virginia, Viognier and Chardonnay dominate the white wine category while Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc lead the reds. Of course, it will always be possible to find some lesser known “obscure” varieties, like the aforementioned Petit Manseng, but it does seem like the wine industry in Virginia, on the whole, has decided to focus on growing what grows best given the current climate in the region. Of course, you never know what new grapes could make an appearance in the future.
June 3, 2017: The Taste of Victory!
Swirl. Sharp sniff. Swirl. Swirl. Another sharp sniff. Gurgling noises and concentrated faces. Finally, a conclusion “This wine is a 2007 Château Margaux from the left bank of Bordeaux.”
The competitive nature of blind wine tasting has gained popularity in recent times with the acclaimed documentaries like Somm (2012) and published book, Cork Dork (author: Bianca Bosker).
Taking wine beyond mere enjoyment, identifying a wine down to its grape(s), producer, region, and vintage challenges an individual’s senses, specifically those of taste, smell, and touch (hello, astringency, I’m talking to you!). Some would watch and read about these sommeliers and chalk them up to be legends, mythological beings even, with super-human abilities but, legendary or not,
we have three champions walking among us here in the Mansfield group. Students Marie Guido-Miner, Mark Skoglund, and Seth Urbanek are part of a wine tasting team, Cuvee, at Cornell University that competes on both a national and global scale, taking on the palates and brains of wine enthusiasts and professionals alike. Having demonstrated their wine prowess to Cheryl Stanley, the team’s coach, the three were selected to be part of the team that traveled to Switzerland to compete in Millésime EHL, a competition that featured teams from Switzerland, France, Germany, the UK, and the lone American team from Ithaca, NY.
In the days that led up to the competition, the group toured Swiss vineyards, meeting with winemakers and wine distributors, tasting tens of wines, much like cramming for a test. Whereas cramming involves reviewing material, Marie, Mark and Seth were actually learning material as very few Swiss wines ever reach the teeming shores of the United States. These days of tasting would prove critical in the competition, which placed a heavy emphasis on local wines, giving the Swiss teams an (unfair, if you ask me) advantage. The competition started with a preliminary round of
three whites, three reds, and a short written exam. Each team had to identify the wines in each flight (Swiss Chardonnay, anyone?) and correctly answer as many of the written questions as they could. At the end of the round, the top three teams advanced. Among the eight teams, the two teams from Switzerland and Cornell’s Cuvee team advanced. The final round consisted of one white and one red, which each team had time to taste and discuss before they were asked to present the wines, identifying the grape, region of origin, and year, as well as suggest a food pairing to match the descriptors of the wine they had rattled off. At the end of the final round, the winner was…drum roll please…not yet determined! The Cuvee team had tied with the team of Swiss wine veterans (the reigning champions and professionals in the local wine industry). The competition went into an elimination round. Each team was presented with a wine in a black glass as the moderator asked questions like “Is this wine red or white?” “Is this wine New World or Old World?”. One by one, each question was asked and each individual on the two teams would raise their hand to indicate their answer (e.g., “All those who think this is a New World wine, please raise your hand now.”). The team that had the last individual left on stage would be determined the winner. With an extraordinary demonstration of teamwork, the Cuvee team took advantage of the Swiss team’s confusion over the red blend from the Languedoc region of France, and pulled out the victory!
The moral of the story? Practice makes perfect. Pick up a glass and dive in!
May 2017: Sensory Panels and Focus Group Work
As part of a new and concerted effort to establish a pool of participants capable and interested in evaluating various alcoholic beverages, Marie Guido-Miner has been recruiting individuals for wine and beer training exercises that both teach and evaluate basic sensory perception qualities important for wine and beer evaluation. Participants are given a broad overview of ways to approach smelling and tasting wine or beer, with a focus on aromatics that are common between many styles of each of the beverages (e.g., the floral note contributed by linalool, often associated with hoppy beers). Individual perceptions of sweet, sour, and bitter are also examined to see if participants can correctly rank the intensity of each of the samples, from lowest concentration to highest concentration. After the sessions are complete this semester, Marie hopes to have a preliminary group of 100+ people familiar with alcoholic beverage sensory and ready to evaluate commercial and research wines, beers, and ciders!
What drives consumer purchases in the craft beer market? This has been the question Sara Wagner has been attempting to answer from multiple angles, one of which has been the development of a craft beer focus group. Using several different examples of craft beers, she asks small groups of beer enthusiasts to develop a vocabulary to describe and differentiate the various beers. These descriptive attributes are then associated with likelihood of purchase (e.g., is a beer described as tasting of orange rind more likely to be purchased?) to form a clearer picture of which product attributes are influential of purchase decisions.
4/10/17: Field Trip to…Nap!
MS Student, Seth Urbanek, along with Demi, Mark, and Sara traveled over to Seneca Lake to present wine professionals (mostly industry members) with research wines to investigate the sensory impacts of various nitrogen supplementation treatments on Riesling. Using an up-and-coming sensory method, known as napping (a French derived term not at all pertaining to a pillow, an eye mask, and a teddy bear, sadly), participants were asked to evaluate each of the wines, arranging them on a nappe, or large piece of butcher paper in our case, according to how similar or different from each other the wines were. More than 350 glasses of poured wine later, Seth had some raw data! Now for the next set of treatments!
3/1-3/3/17: B.E.V. NY
Dr. Anna Katharine Mansfield, Demi Perry and her group traveled to Henrietta, NY
for B.E.V. NY, the annual meeting of local grape growers, winemakers, and marketing personnel. Industry members traveled from all over the Finger Lakes, Long Island, and the Hudson Valley to attend a three day conference divided into business, enology, and viticulture. Along with Chris Gerling and additional Cornell Enology Extension staff, Anna Katharine and Demi successfully organized and executed a day long tasting of 31 wines to 100+ attendees. Due to the efforts of graduate students across the Food Science department, the pouring went smoothly and the enology day was a sweet success.
2/16-2/17/17: 2017 Cold Climate Conference
Dr. Anna Katharine Mansfield and MS Candidate, Mark Skoglund, travel to Bloomington for the CCC, put on by the Minnesota Grape Growers Association (MGGA). Both Anna Katharine and Mark will present information on past and present research, as well advise on winery best practices given the research findings.
Mark Skoglund will discuss cork closures in a talk titled “Put a Cork in it? Closure Selection and Best Bottling Practices” and present his research on tannin retention in a talk titled “Tannin Retention in Red Hybrid Wines: Pre-Fermentation Fining & MLF Inhibition”. He will also work with Anna Katharine to present “Can you believe your nose? Sensory Training for Winemakers”.
Dr. Mansfield will be discussing mouthfeel and texture perceptions in wine, “Hooked on a Feelin’: Mouthfeel and Texture in Wine”, as well as some research done as part of the Northern Grapes Project, in a talk titled “Yeast, Acid, & Tannins: Results from the Northern Grapes Enology Team“.
For more information about their talks, please refer to the linked PDF.
2/14/17: “You Aren’t Wrong About Wine”- an op-ed by Anna K. Mansfield
Picking out that “perfect” bottle of wine can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. In this op-ed, Anna Katharine discusses why you should feel more at ease when purchasing a new bottle to
try, regardless of ratings or price. “Taking wine descriptions as gospel is problematic”, she writes, “because no two people experience the same wine the same way.” Pour yourself a glass and read why you should follow your palate!
Article can be found here.
2/2/17: Wine Color: It’s All About the Genes featuring Dr. Mansfield
Dr. Anna Katharine Mansfield discusses some of the current research being done on color stability in Vitis vinifera and hybrid wines, focusing on anthocyanin content in grapes.
For a link to the Cornell Cast, click here.